20 Ways to a Bigger, Bolder Social Media Experience

If you are a business, you need a social media page, plain and simple. At the very least, a Facebook or Twitter page helps create more of an online presence for your company. In the eyes of a search engine, the more you do online, the more relevant you are, and the higher up your company will be ranked. At the very most, social media will help you build brand awareness, generate sales leads, and improve your product or service. Here are 20 different ways to build your social media audience.

1. Offer a contest giveaway. People get bombarded with fan page suggestions on Facebook, so you need a way to stand out. Give people a reason to become a fan of your company with a contest giveaway.2. Add a coupon tab. Reward your followers with a coupon tab that only fans can have access to. Retain your followers by changing the coupon every so often.3. Post daily, but don’t spam. You want to maintain a presence so people don’t forget about you, but you don’t want to annoy them with constant updates. I have removed people and pages from my news feed because they were updating every couple of hours.4. Follow those who are following you. This will help you know what types of people are looking for your services. You can monitor what they are talking about and provide opportunities to jump into conversations that relate to your product.5.Don’t sound like a sales pitch. Social media is about conversations. Offer content that is useful and encourages two-way communication.6. Add personal elements. Post photos from a recent event, of your products, storefront, employees, ect. Put a human touch on your company.7. Pose questions and ask for feedback. Listening is more important than speaking when it comes to social media. This is your opportunity to hear what consumers think about your company. This is essential to turning conversations into sales leads.8. Respond to direct comments. No one should feel like his or her voice wasn’t heard. Just a simple “thank you” is enough acknowledgment to keep the person active on your pages.9. Stick a button on your website and add the Twitter or Facebook logo to your sales collateral. It’s simple so don’t skip this one.10. Invite your friends. Again, give them an incentive to “like” your fan page or follow you on Twitter. Send a personal note with each invite.11. Make your own domain name. This makes it easy to tell people where to find your fan page or Twitter account. For instance, PALO Creative’s facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/palocreative.12. Add staff members as admins. This way all the work doesn’t fall on your shoulders. They can make comments and respond to direct messages also.13. Use Facebok ads. It is a cheap way to target a very specific groups of people. This is especially helpful if you are pushing one product or a special event.14. Bring in third party content. Use content from YouTube, Flickr, ect. to embed video, music, and photos. Link to interesting news articles or events that have to do with your service or product.15. Use the search features on Facebook and Twitter. It is a quick and simple way to monitor what people are saying in real time based on key words.16. Embed widgets on your blog and website. This is an easy way to share your status update with people that are not followers of you yet.17. Invite your email and ezine subscribers. If they are already choosing to subscribe to an email from you, chances are they will want to follow you on the social media sites as well.18. Add your social media links to your email signature block. This way, anyone you correspond with will see that you’re on the social media stage and curiosity will lead them to click on the hyperlink.19. Get fans to tag photos. If you are attending an event that is open to the public, ask your followers to tag you in their pictures from it. This is an easy way to maximize the ripple effect of social media.20. Link Facebook and Twitter. Make your life easier by integrating these two sites so your social media is a one-stop shop.